Dexter Holland

Do you know anybody who died? Uh? People who know people you know, our guitar players. Mother in law for example, actually passed away from COVID. So it hits home. It's close enough, that's and you could, you know, you could you could kind of feel the circle tightening, you know. Before it was like, I don't know anyone who's even gotten it, and then all of us know that guy

got it. That guy got it, and then pretty soon it was this person died, and it was it was feeling kind of kind of scary around the holidays and in your circle. How many people got it? Uh? I mean ten, maybe half a dozen something like that. Anybody really close to you, my my buddy's wife, I guess it would be like that close. Okay, So why do you think everybody, so not everybody, but of the country is so reluctant to get vaccinated? Right right? Well, I

mean cheefs. We could go into a whole thing about that. Right here. The reason I'm asking you all this it's not only do you we interact with the public, but you're someone who actually knows the science. Yes, I have a I have a doctorate in molecular biology, which is sort of like a biotech I guess you call it. And uh, I focused on the HIV virus, So, um,

I know a little bit about virology. You know. What I know is more the nuts and bolts of you know, how virus actually work, some latches on and that stuff. You know. I'm not an epidemiologist, so I'm certainly not an expert. But I mean I think vaccine reluctance. I mean it's a it's a distrust of government, distrust of authority, and that goes back to you know, Watergate. I guess I don't know exactly how far back you want to go, but and and certainly the last administration didn't help that

at all. I think it encouraged people to to not want to be part of these kinds of things because they feel like they're going to be controlled or there's a chip in the vaccine. Okay, Certainly as you get into harder rock there are more right wing fans. Is this something you experience amongst your fan base or something

you might worry about. Uh, that's a great question. I mean, of course there's you know, the Ted Nugents of the world and all all that kind of stuff, But you know that our world is more of what I would call a punk rock world, and it really is different. Like the only guys with doctorates I know are in punk bands, not not the rock stuff. So we're not really exposed to the right wing stuff too much, I don't think. So why do you think the punk rockers

have doctorates and the other people don't? That is a great question. We were talking about that just the other day, like what is it that Maybe it's uh, you know, it's not funk authority, it's question authority, I guess, right, you know, ask questions and and uh, there was just something you know that was I think was intellectually stimulating about the punk rock that we're listening to, and we grew up and you could all say, and for those of those who lived through the era, it was definitely

a turn away from what was existing. That's why you know they did it to begin with. You know, the ramans very basic, very short songs, so it you know, this creativity is inspiration more than execution. So I agree with you. It took a lot of intelligence and risk

to make punk rock. I'm not trying to say we're the smart guys necessarily, but I mean when I was growing up, you know, the rock, the you know, the the the Sunset strip scene at the time was very much top down with the girl and all that kind of stuff. And it was bands like the sex Pistols that I was way more drawn to because it was heavy and it was political and it felt more I don't know, substantive, I guess. Okay, let's talk about the new album. So there hasn't been an album for years.

How do you finally decide to release a new one? I know, Uh, well, it's not just being lazy. It was actually being kind of busy and um just kind of not putting a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the record. I think that there's kind of a natural pressure once you start releasing records that like, oh my gosh, we have to put out something every two to three years or will be obsolete. It would be forgotten and stuff. And that's kind of a hard thing

to to live with, feeling like you're under pressure to create. Um. Pressure is not usually good for creativity. And we do tour quite a bit. We're on the road almost four months of every year, so um, when we get home, it was harder to fit in the studio time. But I mean, really, I think I just wanted to feel like the songs felt good and it felt like the

right record for the right time. And and that's really what finally happened just this last year, as it felt like these are the things I want to sing about, and I feel good about these songs, and it feels like the right time for this record. Now the record is got twelve songs, but it's pretty short. Thirty three minutes. Was that conscious? Well? I mean we felt like it was long enough we could have put out. We could have,

you know, spent another six months or a year. I've done a couple more songs, I guess, but it felt like it was okay, I don't know. I asked Peter Patterneau. He said it was all right. No, Peter was a lawyer that we share. No. I thought it was brilliant and it was only still because it's got twelve songs, is like, you know, an album of the past. It's digestible. You know. Once we used to have vinyl records, there were two sides. There were four crucial tracks, the first

and last track on each side. Once we went to c D s, it was essentially one side and it was interminable. So the fact that you had only thirty three minutes of music I thought, was, you know, really a throwback and a step against the relative trend. But some of your previous albums were not that short. So

that's why I was asking whether it was conscious. Well, I mean, we wanted to keep it tight, I guess, you know, short and sweet, make sure all the songs counted, and there wasn't filler, And you know that's the worst to think, like, oh, we need to come up with five more minutes so fans don't complain it's too short. Like that's not the right standpoint. A few point to come from, Okay, but the time the album was done

before covid Or, wasn't it. It was. We had finished it pretty much right before, and I think we even had a single release date of last May, and we uh had the record done. We went down to South America to do some shows, and that's when the pandemic started. They were literally canceling shows around us in Brazil and then Argentina. We did manage to holl off one show in Chile before they said tours over and you better scrambled to get home because they might close the airports.

So we got home just barely in time. And you know, within a couple of weeks, you could feel that it didn't feel like the right time to put out an album, so we just kind of we kind of tweaked it. Actually we didn't just put it on the shelf. We kind of went back and did some remixes. And I'm in retrospect, I'm glad we spent the time because it

actually did come up a notch. That's that's a real thing, uh in in the industry, when you're doing a record and you you have to have it finished by a deadline, and there is a certain point where you do let things go and you don't always take things that last maybe ten percent that you wish you could. And this is one of those times where we actually had the

chance to do that. Okay, Now, the paradigm amongst the let's call it the Spotify top fifty is really change where there's not a focus on album there's a focus on endless singles. Is that something you thought about because the old paradigm was, you know, there were years between releases. Uh. You know, our old producer Dave said, look, you guys are partly a punk band and partly a pop band. He goes, and I feel like if you were just one or the other, you probably wouldn't be as successful.

He goes. It's the idea that you have both. So we've always put songs on there that I felt weren't just standard punk songs, and that was important. I mean not just in an effort to be commercially successful, but I felt like it was just something creatively I wanted to do. I wanted to to not just feel like I'm doing the same thing or rehashing or I've got this one small niche and that's what we're gonna stick to. So in that sense, uh, I guess you're conscious of it.

But you know, I was thinking about this the other day, not knowing where you were gonna go in terms of musical history. But you know, when I was growing up, it was all about the forty five, you know, like, uh, you know, those little those little pieces of plastic that. And you know, when I was old enough to start becoming aware of music, my my, my parents at this point had been accumulating ten years of forty five. There were stacks and we used to go through them, and

you know, back then it was it was everything. It was, you know, Jimmy Rodgers kisses sweeter than wine and honeycomb and I was digging through trying to find Snoopy versus the Red baron and all that kind of stuff. So it was very much a singles kind of world back then. The album thing didn't really come along until much later. Okay, So on this new album, you do a well we can call it a cover, but it's your original song. You do another version of going Away. What inspired you

to put that on the album? It started as just a live thing. We thought that with all the heaviness in our songs in our set, it would be nice to just have a breather in the middle of the show, and so let's redo a song in a much quieter way, and that seemed like the natural choice. You've gone always the song that we did uh in a heavy way on our extental the Aumbree record, and um, we thought doing it on piano would kind of add a personal nous to it. Uh, something in you know, makes the

vocal more apparent. And the songs about you know, losing someone, it's about grief, so it had a message that I thought would be good to approach that way on the on the piano. So it was kind of like, well, let's what the hell, let's see what happens. When we played it live, the reaction was pretty instant. It was, you know, lighters up in the air and a lot of comments on social media saying this makes the song even more meaningful to me and where can I get

a recorded version of this? So it was almost like fans demand that kind of inspired us to go and try to record it. Well, if you go online, you can see YouTube versions of you playing it with the band on the piano, but the version on the album is similar yet different in that it's produced. It has strings, etcetera. Whose decision was to add all that well we had. When we play it live, I start on the piano and it felt right to have the band kick in

at the end, and that felt really good. When we got into the studio, Uh, somehow that that approach felt flat. It didn't feel like it had the emotion. And I was thinking about how can I approach this? Uh. This kind of a funny story because there's a lot of what goes onto the studio. Talking to Bob about this, like what do we do? What do we do? And I said, you know when a great song just vocal and piano is Joe Cocker, you are so beautiful? Like

what is it about that song? And Bob explained to me all the things that he felt made that song work, the way the piano moves and how it gets out of the way of the vocal in certain spots, and how strings come in. And I thought, you know, that's great. Let's let's use that as our inspiration, uh for the way we want to frame this song. And we took it from there. So how long did it take you

to perfect it? Uh? Yeah, a few months. I guess we work in a different way, you know, Back in the day, it was like, you're gonna book the studio for three months and you're never gonna come out until this record is done. And I felt kind of burned out doing it that way. And I think that there's a certain point where you're running out of ideas and then you're kind of just staring at each other trying

to figure out how to finish the song. So what we do now is we go in for a couple of weeks at a time, we go through all the ideas and hash it out, and then it's like, Okay, that's all I got for right now, and then we go home and sit on it for a month. And then by the time we get back together for a couple of weeks again, I've got lots of ideas to carry it forward. It's just much more short spurts. Well, I certainly know that Bob is in Hawaii, Bob Rock

the producer. Now there's always issue of studio. I see you're in a studio. Now do you cut it in your own studio or do your book a different studio? We do now this is our studio in Huntington's Beach. We used to go to l A. Of course, to do it, and this kind of started as a demo studio. As a technology improved and Bob k On coming down, we added to the equipment and the whole thing until

now we're pretty self sufficient here. We can do everything, including mix, so if you decide you want to go in, it's not like you have to worry about booking the time. It's always available. It's always available. It's just kind of getting schedules together with Bob. He has other other things that he works on as a well, of course. And so what's the reaction been since the album has come out of the new version of Going Away? It feels

really good. And I was not sure about that because it's it will sound like a departure compared to our other material, and you're never sure how your your audience is going to react to something that's so different. But maybe just because we've been around long enough people we can get away with it more. It's been been very very good so far. Well, it's an astounding listen. It reminds me of when Green Day and I hate to compare acts, but there I did when they went into

that mode. Okay, this is a song not solely for alternative. This is a song that could be for everyone. Is the label thinking about that? Are you thinking about that? You know we have this in our pocketed sometime we're gonna try to expose it to a larger audience. I would love to. I think I've brought up to the label. Hey, can you make sure you listen to the last song on the record too. I think it's pretty good. We'll

see see what I have. You only listen once, and it is the same song, is the one you recorded earlier on Nicks Nay, But it's really a different record, and it affects you. I mean, this is really a one listen all of a sudden. You know, some things are just so in the pocket, you know. I think a couple of those foreigners songs, you know, waiting for a girl like you, I want to know what love is? You want it to go waiter say? And this is

something everybody yeah, well thank you? Yeah. I mean I remember a guy five years ago saying, hey, you know, my my buddy down the street passed away, and boy, sure would love to play that piano version at his memorial? Do you have that? And we hadn't recorded it yet, so but I thought, how interesting that in his mind, a song like this would would would feel right in that kind of heavy experience. So I know she mean

about a different audience. I guess, right, Okay, but the song was based on a real situation, correct, I mean, yes, yeah, yes, and no, don't don't really talk about that too much. Yes and no. I mean documentation would say that you had a girlfriend who passed away in a car accident? Is that factually Drew? No, it's not, it's not. Uh well,

what the hell tell the story? I guess. I was with my wife on a Sunday and we had gone to dinner and we were going to um Baskin Robbins for our after dinner or whatever ice cream and drive home. And this is, you know, just on Honeyton Beach where we live. And so we're waiting in line and there's ten people in the store. A couple runs in. They go call the police. Someone's chasing us with a gun, and we're like, what the hell, what's going on? And

all of a sudden shots rang out. So these these people in this in this car, they had been chased by gangan bank gang members in another car who were mad at him for some reason. They ran into the store. These guys decided to shoot up the store, so, I mean,

they it looks like they shot high. I don't think they actually intended to kill anybody, but anyway, all of a sudden, here we are and it's one of those like strip malls where it's it's a complete glass you know, front to the store, shooting it, and uh, all of a sudden, it's like, well, funk, I'm we're gonna die, right, And you know, in hiding, trying to you know, get behind a trash can or something, not even knowing where

the bullets are coming from. And it turns out I was right in front of the gunman or whatever, but you know, and then crawling over to my wife and you know, putting my body on top of hers and just knowing like I'm gonna get shot, any secondary gonna get shot, and you know, there were several shots that rang out. The whole front was was was what you know, was shot out, and uh, luckily no one was hurt. So I think they just wanted to have fun and

scare everybody, right. I don't think they're really trying to kill anybody, but I think just the the the idea that we came so close to death was a real life changing moment. And it was right when we were recording X Nay and uh I I was coming up with the the idea. I knew I wanted the song to be heavy, but I didn't know what was gonna be about yet. But it was kind of like the

feeling of in a in a weird way. I know, it's not a direct connection, if you know what I mean, but it made you think about, you know, about dying and about grief and about what that would feel like and what if what if my wife had been the one? Okay, so the incident happens. How long after that do you write the song? And has it come to you in a flash or something takes a long time to work out? Oh? I wrote it in the next week. It was quick, Yeah it was. It was done in a few days.

And the lyrics. How long to take you to write the lyrics? A few days? Yeah? Quick? Quick for me, Quick for you? Okay? So you were you grew up where I grew up in Garden Grove, which is in Orange County, Okay. Garden Grove is how far from the beach, about five miles Okay, So what was it like growing up in Garden Grove. I mean it was very suburban. It was I would say we grew up middle class and not like upper middle class or lower middle class,

just kind of kind of right in the middle. And it was suburban in that way, with the green lawns and the picket fences and everyone kind of kind of being the same, right and and uh, I think there was something about that, because people say, well, why does so many punk rock bands come out of Orange County? It seems like this republican place where everything's nice and mellow, And I think that there was something in the homogeneity, something in the sameness, the boredom of that that inspired

the rebellion that you see in in these bands. I don't know how else to explain it. Okay, would your parents do for a living? My mother was a school teacher and my father was a hospital administrator. Okay, did you go to the school where your mother was the administrator? No? Never did, never did? Okay did you go to public school? Private school? Yet? Regular, regular old public school in Garden Grove? How many how many kids in the family? Four total,

an older brother and sister and a younger brother. Okay, so you're in the middle, in the middle, so you traditionally in the middle, the attention is on the oldest and the youngest, and you're kind of lost in the shuffle doing your own thing. What was your experience? Uh? I think so, you know, on the third So by the time that comes around, they've given up on the communion and all that stuff, and they're like, you do have maybe a little more freedom, I think, which which

I liked. So you start going to school, what's your experience there? Uh uh? You know, I did well at school. I I liked it. I don't mean to hesitate, but it always sounds weird because I remember always being as you grew up, doing well in school was not cool, right, You're you're right, you're hesitating to frame your answers so you don't say something right, like dumbing down your words or whatever. That was definitely a part of it. But um but I liked I like learning. Okay, So you

go to school and you do well. Are you aware of the fact that you're on the upper end of the class and how does it affect your integration with the other people there? Um? Well, for sure, I did, I did, I did well. So uh uh, you know, you find you have to find your own group, your own click, right, and that's a an ugly process. In junior high or not, you're it's the one big group, or I mean in elementary it's one big group. Junior high is where it starts to separate and get weird

and you feel like you don't have a place. And I think in high school hopefully you eventually find your group. And it was the group that I started hanging out with that we eventually formed the band from Okay, well, how did that group fit in the high school? We ran across country. You're a cross country How did that come together? I don't know. I decided I always liked distance running, uh, and so started doing it in high school.

I was never good or anything, but but I liked it and did it all were years and that was kind of our click ended up being that, And it turned out that we all liked punk rock also, so we were like this, these guys that you know likes punk rock and we ran across the country, but we didn't have mohawks and leather jackets, so we kind of didn't even fit in with the punkers. We are our

own little weird group and stuff. So I know it's very fashionable to say, well, we never fit in, that's why we are who we are, but it really was pretty it was true in our case. Okay, you were punk rockers. In your case, when did you start playing an instrument? Um? I think I was fourteen. My my my mother came home from school and saw me sitting on the couch too many days in a row, and she's like, you're doing something. You're gonna start playing piano, and uh so she she made me take piano for

about a year. And after a year I felt like it wasn't cool being fifteen and going into high school and playing piano, which is, you know, a dumb idea now, But she let me off and I would it across country instead. But I'm really glad now, of course that she forced me to, uh to do that. There there there might not be a goneaway version, for example, if I if we hadn't done that. Okay, do you know how to read music? I mean I could, I could count down the lines and go I think that's a

c but no, I guess it's the answer. Okay, so you're running across country and you're punk rock fans. At what point do you say, hey, maybe we can form a band, right, uh, well yeah, punk rock fans, and we loved bands like The Dead Kennedy's and The Ramons and all that kind of stuff. I think it was when we first heard a band from Orange County called Tis So Well that it kind of took it to the next level. It was almost like, oh, well, wait a minute, I don't just like that. I want to

be that. I want I want to start a band. So that happened when we were about seventeen, but we didn't We didn't play instruments. That's the story is that we we went to a show, couldn't get in. It was actually a social distortion show and Irvine, and then we ended up at somebody's house saying, well, shoot, maybe we should start a band, like, well, we don't play instruments, Like what the hell, let's start a band anyway, And we actually like divvied up parts that night, Well what

do you want to play? I'll play bass, I'll play guitar. And that is literally how the band started. And then we went out and asked our parents to buy as guitars. Okay, let's really by school. So what was your relationship with girls? During high school and junior high Uh, awkward for sure. I don't know. I think we're you know, we're typical kids. I don't think we really had girlfriends so much until maybe, you know, senior year high school, that sort of thing.

So what is the instrument you're supposed to play? When you divvy it up, it was gonna be the guitar, guitar, and so we picked you know, drums, guitar, bass. Nobody said I'm going to be the singer. We kind of we weren't sure how to treat that. So I think we all left that alone. And I think we all sort of maybe dabbled in it here and there, and you know, over the next year. Um, it turned out it was gonna be me. Okay, so you're gonna get You go home and you say, Mom and dad, I

want a guitar. It was my Christmas present. And how did you how did you decide what guitar you want? We went to the music store and asked it was. It was a Hondo. It costs ninety nine dollars and Hondos are not knowing for being great guitars. And he gave, uh, he he had me buy this amp called a bassman, uh for ninety nine dollars also or my dad bought it and uh it turns out it's really not a

guitar amp. It's a bass amp. And uh, our our bass player, also got a bass for Christmas and they bought him a PV backstage, which is a really a guitar amp. So we kind of got together first practices and after a month if you realize we're playing the wrong amp, so we we switched. Okay, so you get the guitar. You don't know how to play, now learn how to play not a lick. You know, you sit you sit down and you fiddle with it. The way I really did it was I sat on my bed

and I put on the LPs that I loved. It was it was bands like ts L of course and the Ramons and and stuff like that, and kind of just listened and tried to figure out what they were doing, um and and and mimic it. Okay, but if you know nothing, it's not as easy. It's not like there are pictures back then. You know, there's the key, there's the tuning, you know, there's the notes. There's a lot of ship going on. It was a bit well I mean, I had a guitar practice book and it's like, we'll

try these scales, these exercises, and I hated it. That wasn't interesting to me at all, the the theory or the scales. Like I wanted to play punk rock, That's what I wanted to do. So I use those books enough to figure out how to tune the guitar, and then sometimes maybe in a song you could figure out. I mean, chords were beyond me, but if there was a single string melody, I could probably figure that out. That was the first thing. And then I kind of

realized it is gonna be barkhors. That was going to be important to learn, and I just couldn't figure it out. And it was actually by looking on the back of a record cover, I saw a guy in a band that I loved playing a barcord and the thing is he had his thumb pressed against the back of the neck. That's how you keep your fingers on. But I had not.

I had just never figured that out. I hadn't taken lessons, and it was like, ah, so in a way, these these bands that I loved really taught me how to play guitar okay, and how so everybody got it into everybody did what they said they were gonna do. Yes, And how long after you got the instruments did you play together? Uh? I think in the next months. What became apparent is that some of us, I mean, we're all really terrible, um, but some of us were never

gonna get it. Like our our drummer was he was never going to be able to figure out how to play the drums. And you know, he had fun with it for a while and then um, he actually, well we're this is the January before we graduated. So by June we've graduated, he got a girlfriend. He didn't want to be to play the drums anymore. He was having more he was having more fun with his with his girlfriend and stuff. And our guitar player didn't work out

too well either. So it was that kind of thing and trying to find another guy in the neighborhood to play drums, and eventually we ended up with a lineup two years later that that stick together for for seventeen years. Okay, so the guy bought a whole drum kit and then stopped playing. He did he didn't, he didn't care, he didn't care about it. That much. Okay, and you're in the high school. Is it true that you're with a valedictorian? Yes, I was a valletorian. Okay, so that bigs a question.

What'd you get on your S A T S cheez? It was? Um, it was different back back then the way it was scored. Um, the math was always easier for me. Uh but I think it was. It was a thirteen fifty. So what is that like? It was like a seven hundred and six fifty I think something like that. Okay. How did you end up deciding to go to USA? Um? I really felt tight with the guys who are hanging out with and the idea of

starting over another state. I just I felt like I wanted to stay closer to home to go to school. So to me, that meant UM either USC or U C l A. UM. I thought I was interested in the Air Force Academy because I wanted to fly, but um I had I had to wark glasses or contacts, so I was going to be eliminated from the pilot category. So I I nixed that off the list and I applied to both USC and U C l A. They both admitted me and the U C U C l A letter. I'm not bagging on U. C. L A

by the way, but they said, congratulations, we're in. We'll see in October. The USC letter said, congratulations, you're in. We'd love to welcome to your reception, and we want to talk to you about a scholarship and please come hang out with us. And here talk to this guy, this professor. So they were they were very much recruiting. But um, but it really made me feel much more wanted at USC. So did you get a scholarship of USA? I did. I got a couple of them that. Um. Again,

I don't know how my parents would have afforded. I don't think they could have. But um, my scholarships paid about se my tuition, so you didn't have to borrow any money. No, my parents were able to handle the other. And then did you live on campus or near campus? Yep? Lived in the dorms the first year and then on student housing the other three years. Let's go back at

chapter what was your valedictorian speech? Uh? Well, in all fairness, there were they didn't have a p classes then, so there were there were three people that had all ace four point oh was as much as you could get back then, and so we all had to give a speech, and mine was just kind of like, I didn't Frankly, I didn't feel comfortable being on stage for a long speech, so I kept it short. I just kind of said, hey, everybody, you know, we've all got we all have a shot

at success. Please, you know, keep that in mind and make the most of your chance. Okay, when you go to USC is the dream to be a rock star? No, I was pre mad. I thought I was interested in surgery. UM. Cardiac surgery really appealed to me. I thought at the time. You know, when you think you have something in mine that you want to do, as you know, it's hard

to know. Sometimes it feels natural and it stays that way, and sometimes what you learn about it, you're like, oh, actually, I'm not sure if I love it as much as I thought I did. So, Uh, I was interested in in medicine, and uh, you don't major in medicine, you major in biology usually, Uh, if you're gonna take that path, So that's what I was doing. But I was starting to become really into the band, and I was really

excited about this. UM. You know, we had now been playing guitars for six months and maybe we were going to write a song or something. So, uh, I would come home on the weekends and that's how we did our our band practices, that we would we would jam every weekend, all weekend. Okay, So at this point it's the solid members for seventeen years. When do you play your first gig for money? Yeah? No, sorry that we

had been our first guys. Yeah. I mean, if we're going back to the beginning of the band, Um, it

was just a couple of years. Um, the first show that I can remember, it was a show in Santa Cruz where we opened for another punk band called White Flag and and having you know, terrible stage fright and there was only forty people there, and um, it was terrifying and it was exciting and it was exhilarating, and uh, it was everything I wanted because it was like, you're with your buddies, you're driving away somewhere for the weekend,

you're drinking beer, You're it's a disadventure. It was really what it was. The money was completely not important at all. It'd be great if you get your gas covered, but I think we got forty dollars. How did you get a gig in Santa Cruz. Uh, you know, I've started looking around, really trying whatever I could find. A big

resource back then where the fanzines. Fanzines like Flip Side magazine and stuff, and they would say here's a booking agent or here's a promoter, or they would talk about shows around the country and saying here's this club in Santa Cruz that's had shows, and we would call them up ourselves and say, hey, can we can we get a show and maybe send him a demo tape. Okay, And at this point you're playing in Santa Cruz all originals? Yeah, how do you write those songs? That? Did any of

them make the cut further down the line? I don't think so. I think let me see if I can even remember all these. I felt like it's kind of this joke, but like, look, if you're gonna start a punk band, there's four songs you got it right right away. There's four bases you gotta cover. One of them is an anti police song, one of them is an anti war song. Uh, one of them is uh I'm depressed and I want to die song, and the fourth one is my girlfriend's a bitch. So those were the first

four songs that we wrote. I think, okay, so you play in Santa Cruz, you have a good weekend. What's the next step after that? Uh, it was getting shows wherever we could. It was really hard in those days because there were no steady venues, especially for for punk rock, right. I mean, the the sunset scene was kind of happening, but we were never going to get a show at the Whiskey and Go Go, and we couldn't draw anybody anyway.

And even the anti club I thought was the punk Is Club in l A. And they didn't want to book us. They're like, yeah, we're not really booking punk bands. So, as you probably remember, these shows would pop up once in a while at a vf W hall or something. It was like maybe, if you're lucky, you could get on one gig and then the place would go, you know, because the cops would show up and there'd never be another show again. So that was something we chased around

for a few years. And it was really Gilman Street opening up in Berkeley, which provided um a steady venue, a venue that stuck around, and we could go up there every you know, three times a year maybe, and so we actually sort of developed a following up there just by virtue of there being a steady place. The venue is so important, okay. And who was the business guy in the band? I mean we all did a little bit of it. I definitely had a lot to do with it, because usually the drummer is a business

guy and you're not the drummer. No, no, no, our drummer was. He was. He was the youngster in the band. He was five years younger, so a little bit different dynamic. Okay, So when does the lineup formalize? Like what year? No, yeah, how far into you you start playing in January your senior year high school? At what point does the group formulate in the seventeen year run? Right? Two years? Two years later we had the four guys. That was the case.

You have two years everybody serious about it, everybo or they just say, well, I'm doing this. Uh. I think we were serious, but we had no expectations. I think the idea was like, look, there's no punk band that's gonna make a million dollar there sell a million records or that. That just that it doesn't exist in the universe. So we love what we did, and I definitely was felt strongly about pursuing it and trying to to be to make the most of it and be whatever we

could be. But it was it was gonna be. It was a small, a low bar, I guess, okay, and you were in college. The other members what were they doing? Uh? College? Uh? Bass player Greg full time college. Noodles was part time college and full time working. And Uh, I think Ron the drummer was going to a technical school. So students mostly, Okay, And at what point do you say we're gonna put a demo? Try to pursue this more seriously. You know.

Recording was really important to me from the very beginning. So even before we had the four guys together. Uh, I would go to a studio and just work with an engineer for ten dollars an hour. I remember that. The first guy, he was in Placentia and he lived at his mom's house, and he converted his garage in a regular suburban house to a studio and that's where we cut our first songs. So if I had to play more than one instrument, I would just do it. And I didn't know how to play drums, but we

did the best we could. And so we're putting songs together from the very beginning. Okay, when did you start to shop a tape? Well, when you say shop, when did you say, we have a tape and we're either going to put it out ourselves or find someone else to put it out. Yeah, it's not like you get a manager and an agent. It's not that kind of it's way down low, right, So I think that at

first it was just to circulate to friends. If we got a show, we'd either give them away or you know, I found, uh, there was a twenty five pack you could get for twenty five dollars, so I would be we would dub tapes and either charge a dollar or give them out. They'd also be kind of like your audition tape if you wanted to get a show at like there was a club here in Huntington called Safari Sam's and you could send a demo tape there to try to get booked. So uh, as far as selling them, cheeze,

I guess you know. We did put an ad in Flip Side magazine, okay, by our demo tape for two dollars or whatever, but it was at that at that level, just selling tapes out of the back of a magazine and what was the next big step. We decided to make our own single. Uh. And it's not that we wouldn't have loved to have a label do it for us, but it just wasn't an option. There wasn't the interest

from anybody. So we decided to record our own. It was a seven inch with two songs, and we did that in and we made a thousand copies of it of it, and we were very excited. We didn't know how we're going to sell a thousand copies that was. That was like, you know, crazy number to get, but that was like the lowest quantity I think you could order. But the deal was that it was so it was all the money we had just to get impressed that the sleeve part wasn't included. Um, you had to do

that separately or pay a lot for it. So we actually got these record jackets printed up, a thousand of them, and we had to glue them together ourselves. So we assembled our own singles and it was done. Then what you do with it We advertise and flip side, you know. I think we actually found that there were some small distributors at that point. I'm trying to think of their names, but you know, along the lines of a caroline or whatever that would they would actually say, I'll take fifty

of them. So we're selling like little bundles of fifty to a hundred. Um. I think I don't know if we ever sold through them, but um, I think I think they lasted mostly for about three years, so the distributors didn't return them unsold. No, No, I don't know if I really cared about that, just in terms of marketplace. Okay, so what happens next A big step in the band? Or you graduated from college? Oh, my gosh, Um graduated

from college, didn't get into medical school. I think by that time I was kind of I don't want to say half hearted, but not a committed to that h And Um, so I didn't get into medical school, and the idea was, well, why don't you stick around and get your masters and then do you look better on paper to try to get in medical school? And I liked that idea of it. I think, you know, honestly, I liked the idea that it gave me more time to mess around with the band and stay at home.

So we did that, and about that time is when we finally got interest from a label, a record label, and we put out our first album, self titled The Offspring. Okay, and at some point in this game, you have a child. What happens there? Yes, that's right. Uh had had a daughter, and it was it was a tough, a tough situation. Um, but you know, it just kind of kind of made made the best of it. I mean, um, you know it got better later on. I guess I'll just put

it that way. Okay, So you have was it a girlfriend who got pregnant or someone you didn't know that well, someone I didn't know very well? Okay? And there was no issue of getting an abortion? No, no, uh no, So you must have been freaking out. I was freaking out. I was freaking out. I was twenty three. What did your parents say? They said, jeez, you know, you could really mess up your life, and like, well, this is it. I just have to deal with what what I've got

going on. And uh, you know, you don't want to. You don't look at it from that side. You look at it the fact that there's you know, there's there's a child here you want to do your best for. And so what did you do and where did you get the money and how involved were you with the child's life? You honestly not very for a while for a while, and then it was it was, you know, several years later where um, I'd made the effort to get involved and that's when that's when things got better.

And did you pay support? We'll always for sure. So where did you get the money to pay support? Well, I mean, you know, they based it on your income. It was still it was a hell of a lot of my income, for sure. But you know, back then, you you took odd jobs, worked in the summer, whatever, whatever you had to do, you know, part time work. So how did you metabolize this or was it a you know, a weight on your shoulder? It was just it was it was what it was. So no, it

wasn't like that. It wasn't processed like that or a weight or anything like that. Okay, let me ask you, do you have any tattoos? I have zero tattoos. Okay, there's obviously thought behind that. What's your thought? I know we're probably, you know, one of the only bands I think actually I think no one in the Vandals has tattoos. And uh, but I know, so tattoos are so you know,

ubiquitous everywhere, and especially as time went on. I mean, you know, in the eighties and nineties, maybe it was a couple here and there, and then by the time you get to the Warp Tour in the two thousands, you know, an eighteen year old kid is completely sleeved. So it's definitely changed. But you know, it wasn't that

I didn't like them. I think they're cool. I just I never felt strongly about any one thing that I wanted to get a tattooed on me, and I kind of thought, yeah, maybe I'll feel differently in a few years. And uh, and I also thought that, you know, I knew that like you're gonna change, you might not love

at at forty what you loved at at twenty. So I just never just never appealed to me enough to go through and get one so on someone that you say, this is permanent, and therefore, you know, I don't want to take a risk if it's permanent. I didn't want to. I mean, the more I thought about it, that there was enough time like, Okay, look, I don't want to be that guy with a bad billy tattoo, right, I've seen enough bad tattoos that people regret to know that

that wasn't what I wanted to be. Okay, the first album, nothing really happens. Ultimately you make the album with epitaph what is going on in your day to day life between graduated from college and before things start to come together in nineties war. Yes, So I did finish the masters at at USC, and uh, you know, my undergrad was in biology, just general biology. The masters was in molecular biology, which is like genetics, and I really liked the subject a lot. I thought it was really cool,

was it was. I was interested in it, like I could see myself going further with that. UM. I applied to medical school again and didn't get in again. Uh. I think if it had been USC, I probably would have gone. And I got pretty far in the process. They interviewed me. That's like the last step before they

decide UM. I interviewed it a couple of other places, like I interviewed Georgetown and a couple uh medical schools in Philadelphia Hanuman and Jefferson, and uh, I think I kind of just didn't quite finish the application with those guys. I think I had a good shot, probably because I I had done well on the MCATs and stuff. Uh, And I think again it was that kind of like kind of uh, sorry, what's the word, sabotaging yourself a little bit, maybe so that you don't go in a

direction you don't want to go. I think subconsciously the band was important and I didn't want to let that go. So I want to try to figure out a situation where Okay, I'm not going to be one of those guys that drops out and just tries to make it in a band that just didn't seem realistic to me. But I'd like to stay in l A so I could find something that I like to do and still do the music. What and he thought about what that

might be. Well, since I didn't get in medical school, that that the school USC said, well, look, you've already got the masters, why don't you just come back and keep on working on the doctorate. We'll we'll let you continue, which was an amazing opportunity. And I loved it because I did like the subject. But I also knew that as a graduate student you've got pretty amazing flexibility. Like if I had to go to Reno on a Thursday to play a show, I could I could do it.

I could. I could get away with it and get back and put in the time over the weekend or something. So it was actually a pretty good situation being a grad student. Okay, come out and play. That becomes a phenomenon in l A. Jim garin Oh is your manager, yet he is working at A and M. And then Alcafaro goes to a program at Harvard, so the gym is literally running A and M and all of a sudden K Rock picks up the record and it becomes the biggest record on k rock. What is the experience

from your side of the glass, It was incredible. I mean, you know, going from zero to a hundred for sure, and especially in our case. You know, I remember bands doing interviews saying, you know, when we were first together, we could only draw ten people until our first single came out. I mean we drowed. We drew ten people for ten years. I mean the band was ten years

in when Come Out and Play came out. And I remember right when, right before the record Smash came out, we did a hometown show and we actually drew a hundred people. So that was the best we had ever done, was a hundred. After all that time, so for this song to get on the radio and all of a sudden really connect was just it just blew our minds. It was crazy. I mean I I was living in an apartment with with my girlfriend, and all of a sudden there were label guys like knocking on my door.

I had no idea how they tracked me down, but A and our guys were coming to my little tiny apartment and Hunton Beach saying hey, can I talk to you? And I go, well, I gotta take out the trash. My my girlfriend wants for to on the trash, and it's like, well, can I take out the trash with you?

Like being being followed around, you know, so you kind of have these moments where it feels real in a way that you're not sure before, you know, like uh, like being in the newspaper was something that really legitimized it for my parents, like because they they were always supportive, but they were hoping it was kind of a phase for me, hoping I just you know, get with it

and go back to medical school or something. But when they saw us in the l a times, all of a sudden, for them it's like, Okay, this is real.

I finally got their seal of approval. Um. I think another moment for me was being in our kitchen and because you live in a small apartment conflict plaw and complex, your kitchen win dough faces the guy next door's kitchen window whatever, right and I'm looking at him and he's on his cordless phone, and because it's we're close en together, I can actually hear him talking and he's on the phone. He goes, no, dude, I'm looking at him right now.

So like, okay, this is actually this is turning into something. Okay. So the album comes out on the Epitaph and the people sniffing around and hunting the beach are from other labels. Yeah, yeah, I major labels, And what was your deal with Epitaph? We were signed I think for another record that that point became a legal legal issue. But um, you know, I was really stoked to be part of the Epitaph thing.

I kind of felt like we finally found in you know, I was talking about finding Mike our social click in high school. These are our guys in a band sense. I felt like we had find found that circle on Epitaph. We had become friends with um bands like Pennywise and No Effects, Rancid of course, and you know, Bad Religion. It was a couple of years ahead of us, so we weren't as tight with them, but it felt like this real, real sense of community, and I didn't want

to leave it. Brett Gurwitz, the owner, was really gung ho about we're gonna make it, We're gonna do it, you know, and he didn't want to lose us to a major um because at that time, every band that got started would go to the major in the middle of the record, whether it was you know, beck On Ball, Load Records or Trent Resider, like none of them finished their successful record at the label they released the record initially on. And he really wanted to do it, and

and I felt kind of excited about it. And there was again because our friends and our buddies were there. It's kind of like this real sense of camaraderie, like, yeah, let's do it, let's do it. Okay, how did you get the deal at Epitaph if you could only draw forty people? Yeah? Yeah, persistence I sent I sent Brett our first record that we released on other label, and he liked it, but he passed and then you know, Uh. We played it uh a club in Hollywood, so I

can't remember what it's called. But um uh he came to the show and thought we were good but kind of passed and then it was really I. I decided to do another demo with four fresh new songs, and one of the songs was the first song on what was going to be the record. And they listened to the demo and said, you're you're, You're gonna be signed. So just on the strength of a demo and how much money do they give you when they signed you? Uh? You know, I gotta give Gret Brett credit for saying,

here's a contract. You have to get a lawyer if you don't have a lawyer, and if you can't pay for a lawyer, I'll actually advance you the money to get a lawyer because you have to sign something. And he marked up a couple of things and sent it back. But I think, um, the first album costs ten dollars to record. That was our budget. Okay, did Annie, how did come out and play? How did that become a hit? Did you really lies that was the song? How did

k Rock end up playing it? Yeah? I felt it was hooky and I thought there was something about it that I had a gut feeling it was something that was good. Uh that epitaph took it to radio. I think they kind of started just like playing it for people saying well, what do you think? What do you think? I don't think they officially approached radio, but they approached K Rock and I got the call in the afternoon. I was at grad school saying, well, hey, they listened.

They had their music meeting today. They listened to fifteen songs and they rejected them all except for yours. Yours is going in And it was like what and they're like, you know, And I think Jed the Fish played her on the drive home that day at five o'clock. And you know, luckily for us, I guess, because it just connected. It was like there was no there couldn't be a push behind it. There wasn't we were there was a small label, there was no money, no budget, nothing like that.

But luckily just it reacted right away, and you know, then it was that on that top five at nine, it was number one. It stayed there for a while. Okay, you live in with your girlfriend in the apartment in Huntington Beach. You're going to grad school. All of a sudden, this album blows up. It's like, so, then what do you do? Yeah? Yeah, well Jim had started managing us before,

and I'm like, well, so what do we do? You know, Noodles is working as literally as a custodian in elementary school and he has child support to pay, and he's like, I can't just quit, and I I didn't want to throw away my grad school and stuff. And uh, we kind of we took it easy for a minute, and then, you know, talking to Jim, it's like, you know, you're gonna have to really, you're gonna have to go for this if you want to shot at it, because this

is the time, you know. And I'm like, well, what if I finished grad school, like a couple of years from now, it'll be gone. You gotta go. So I I quit school, Well, I took a leave of absence. They were nice enough to give me a leave of absence and uh and when you know, started touring, the

thing was it was so palpable. You could feel it changing week to week, you know, because it was k rock one week and the next week it was I would go to Vegas and then it would go to Phoenix, and then it would go to San Francisco and it was spreading that way, and then you know, a month or well maybe two months later, we got MTV, and of course MTV is like a national radio station, so

at that point it was national. And our record came out in April and by June, I think we were in the top twenty, would get number twenty on the album charts, and I knew we were gonna be okay. So there was that really uncomfortable period of thinking of my fucking up my life. But luckily for us, it was pretty quick because it was clear that it was going to be successful enough okay, So you immediately go

on the road playing how often with who? Yeah, we had a booking agent in place already, Uh, just a you know, a girl in her own place doing it. Wasn't like a firm or whatever. And the idea was just to do a a club a club tour. So we're going to the five seaters and gosh, I think we are. We're out for like six weeks, which was

a long time for us. And back then you don't even you don't know what you're capable of, what you can do, and it's all very exciting, you know by the way too, so I think we're playing five in a rows, you know, doing five nights on one night off, So pretty grueling tour. But you know, it was on MTV. So by the end of that tour, I mean every

show was sold out. And at that point we're very comfortable playing the three to five seater and it's still a venue that I really like because there's such a it's so easy to connect with the crowd at that at that level, you know, because you mean you can almost talk to them, right and so, uh, I really enjoyed that tour. And by the end of it, like I said, when you when you get a small a small club that's packed, there's an energy. I mean, it's

just it's bananas, you know, it's really really great. So that was just so much fun. And then it was like, you know, off to Europe and then back and now let's do another round of the U s and we're gonna play you know, small theaters thousand and I think we ended up doing three rounds of the US like that, where we ended up in palladium sized places three thousand, three to five thousand, and when do you personally start

to see any money. Uh oh gosh. I mean it takes a while, right, It's not like here and I get it. Yeah, I mean I think it was a year before we got any real money. Um. I do remember our record came out in April and when we were in Europe, they said congratulations, guys, just sold a million, and we couldn't believe her, like holy sh it. And I think by Christmas it had sold three million. So we knew there was money in the pipeline. But I mean, we couldn't have spent it anyway. We were on the road.

I think we did. We did two shows I think on that record over his span of about fourteen months. And the thing is you cover that, you cover all the whatever, the territory, and then you'd have to do it again because it was a bigger thing now and then you'd have to do it again. So it was it was a lot, but um, you know, we knew that it was the time to do it for sure,

you know. And and we're also you know, talking to Jim, He's like, you should really put the work in in Europe because Europe will stay with you if you go now. And we went to Europe. I think four times on that record. Okay, so how much money did you get when you got paid and what you do with the money. Well, I bought a car. I don't know. I mean it wasn't like gazillionaires, but maybe millionaires. It was enough to

buy a house, I think, you know. And like I said, right, we're it's it's a year and a half later before you're even thinking about that stuff. So you know, I had gotten married. Uh, you know, other guys got engaged and we all kind of figured out where we want to live and bought our first houses. Okay, now you have to make another record, yes, first time. You're nobody. Now you have this gigantic kit. How much pressure do

you feel? You try not to look at it that way, and that's what I would always say in an interview, but I think it's natural to feel it a little bit. Uh. I feel like you maybe can't do your best work if you're coming for that place, because like it's like a mind funk. Right. You don't want to think about what they want, but you don't want to try too hard and not think about what they want. You're trying to just be what you were before, which was unknown.

Um I did know that doing Smash Part two felt like the wrong thing to do. I thought that that doesn't feel right. We have to This is the time where we have to expand our our musical circle, so to speak. We had to try something different. So that was that was part of the thinking going into Extant on the Ombrean and UM. I think the other thing was the recognition that this is going to be a

software slumb. It's gonna be perceived as a software slub, no matter if it's good or bad, it's it's not gonna be what Smash was, and trying to prepare ourselves for that, even though you know they called it soft. People call it that when a band puts out the second record after a successful one. But they're not realizing that we've put out four albums and we've been around

for twelve years and we're not a new band. And how did you end up at Colombia At some when it became clear to us that we needed more than we felt Epitaph could provide. And you know, Epitaph, they they they staffed up a lot, they stuffed up a lot, and they got very good at what they did. But by the nature of who they were. They weren't going to have a presence in South America or you know,

or Asia that much. Really, that was just kind of we were licensing to Sony already in Asia anyway, So we decided we wanted some something that had a bigger worldwide thing going on. And um, uh, you know, it was really Jim going out and and talking to who he felt comfortable with. And we we didn't entertain like eighteen different offers or whatever. We talked to just one or two guys. And and I really liked Columbia from the very beginning, and I liked they came across very

much as we're very artist friendly. Uh you know, back in those days, I don't think people don't even care now that they The worry was that the label was going to control you and make you change your sound and all that, right, and and we never got that

vibe from Colombia at all. I think we're in a we're in a fortunate position already that we were coming in off a record that had sold whatever ten million records, so we definitely were able to tell the label, don't bog us, We're just gonna do what we want to do. And they were pretty content with that because we had a track record. So you go for a long ride on Columbia. What's your experience of that. I really liked Columbia.

I know it's so, you know, easy to to bag on a label or say they did something bad to you or whatever. But I always enjoyed working with them, and um, you know, we had Americana was a successful record, so we had some some some great success working with them. Um. We eventually we extended our contract by a couple of records,

and we did the greatest hits record and stuff. So, believe it or not, we did seven albums on Columbia, and uh, I like to say that I think we may be one of the only bands to actually finish their record contract where we didn't. We didn't get dropped, We actually finished the contract and any thought of staying in Columbia. I think we put out the feelers and they were they seemed happy to move on at that point. Frankly, So, how did you end up with this album at Concord? Yeah,

well we had you know, we're free agents. We didn't have anything to work on and we were touring a lot, and like I said, recording in shorter bursts, So we kind of just took our time and didn't really look for a label for a while. And uh, I think there were some very basic conversations with some labels like Warner or Carolina or whatever. And I think um it was basically Um Concord kind of reaching out and saying, well,

we'd like to talk to these guys. And when it met met with Tom Wally and the people there, and it was it was really great. Okay. And what's the experience of putting a record out today in this crazy internet era? We're back in the old days on Columbia, pre Napster, pre INSANEA. It's so different, so completely different, right, I mean yeah, even you know, the Internet of two thousand is nothing like the Internet of today, and even

the metrics, the measurement is different. Like, you know, we had a number one alternative album this time, and I'm calling the manager saying is that good? Because you know we I think I think we debuted number three in the UK, which is phenomenal and I'm thrilled, but I think that's less than ten thousand records sold, so it's like, is it good? You know, it's kind of more of an amalgamation of it's a combination of streaming and YouTube views and sales and whatever, you know, your social media

that determines, uh, how successful record is. Well in the old days, you gear it up, gear up, hopefully MTV plays the video. No one has that kind of mind here anymore, No one has that kind of reach. Does that affect your interest, desire and perspective on new work? In a way, it's kind of liberal because you can kind of be who you are and you just kind of develop whatever audience that is, right, Like, we're never gonna get played on top forty, so you know that

the whole. Like you said, the MTV, that thing is kind of out. But I think now, like I said, it's easier to express who you are. We're doing like videos on YouTube like a series, and we're calling it how to with the Offspring And on one thing, I we talk tell people how to surf, but we don't really tell them how to surf. And another one, Noodles shows us how to bird watch. And it's kind of like it allows you to express your personality in a broader way than you could have if it was just

single and radio thing. And that's it. So you end up selling your work. How do you come to the conclusion that you want to sell it? How do you make that deal? Well, are our our deal with with Sony Columbia's owned by Sony right of course, and um it was actually a licensing deal. We we came in with enough cloud off of the Epitaph deal that we

got a licensing deal. So we knew that our records were the ownership was going to come back to us at some point and whenever that date was, it's you know, so many years after you deliver your last record, the records came back to us and we kind of had to make a decision as the best way to go. Do we want to re license it or make another deal or how do we want to do it? And just with the different options that were presented, we decided that we're comfortable just selling it and so tell us

about making that deal. You know, there's there's several people out there, players out there. We ended up going with a company called Round Hill, which I um I got along with them. I liked them a lot. I feel like they're very into, you know, developing the bands, like they're they're always they're pressing us like can we do a reissue of Conspiracy of one, we do a really we've done like three or four reissues already and they're

real collector sets, and so it's it's it's cool. It feels like something that is geared towards fans, which is important to us. Okay, those are the albums. How about the songs? What do you mean the songs? Do you still learn the songs? You sold those two round till two? Oh uh yeah, well a majority, a majority of the publishing was sold as well, A majority. Okay, you were the primary songwriter. That didn't mean that much. It means

a lot in the Internet era. Was there ever any discussion about credits in the band as far as publishing goes and stuff, you know? I mean, when you first start off, you're you're so one for all and all for one, right, there's no money or anything anyway, and so on our first couple records, UM, the publishing was

just split evenly, even though I did the writing. And then before we were before Smash, I had a talk with the guys that practices said, I feel like it would be fair for me to get the songwriting royalties because I do the songwriting, and um, they were totally okay with it. Um, you know, it's not like you get three you know, you get five times as much as they do. It's it's however the money works out. It's it's it's a little a little bit extra, I guess.

But but fortunately it was actually pretty pretty easy for everyone to agree on that, and also fortunately we were successful enough that there was there was no griping about it because everyone was doing well. Okay, when you say you sold part of the publishing round till does that mean you continue to own part? Well, there's there's different forms of publishing income, as you know, whether it's sync rights or radio airplay or you know, so I didn't

sell every revenue stream. Okay, Uh, what did you do with the money? But I put in the bank. We're not getting put in the bank. You're an intelligent guy. You're losing money if you put money in the bank. So it's not really that simple. You have to do something with the money, right, that's right? Well, why why is invested? I hope? I hope. I did buy a plane. That was my my treat to myself. Okay, you owned the plane previously though, right, yes, Okay, Jim told me

you want a jet, Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay, you wanted to go to the Air Force Academy, you didn't go. When did you get your pilot's license? And when did you buy your first plane? That was all after smash we came back. You know, I finally had enough money to take flying lessons. I would have never, um never been able to afford that before then. And I don't know, it probably cost five thousand dollars or something like that back in the day to get your license.

And I did it. And you know when I talked before about how some things you think you're gonna like but you're not sure, this was one of those things that just for me just really clicked. I just I really liked it right away. It was gonna be my my golf if you know what I mean. And uh, I bought bought my first airplane shortly after I got my license, a propeller plane. Okay. And at that point, when were you instrument rated? Well almost right away. Um. I know people people out there may not know a

lot about flying, but instrument rating is very important to me. Especially, it was very important people they kind of inadvertently get in the clouds and if you can't fly and just by instruments, you really get in trouble. So I knew that that was something I wanted to make a priority. So I got instrument rated within I don't know, within any year of getting my license. So walk us through your ownership history of airplanes. Uh. Well, when I got

my license, I was I was renting. I got my license from a local airport here and decided I wanted to buy a plane. So I bought a plane called a Mooney and it's a four seater, single engine propeller plane, and I really I loved it and I still have it to this day. But um, I wanted to go, you know, farther and faster, so I ended up buying a King Air. And I love the king Air for it's it's uh for it's very comfy inside. But it

wasn't very fast. So I ended up moving up to a citation, and uh, I've sort of traded up and down over the years. This I'm on my fourth fourth citation. Now. Okay, so you have the Mooney and you have the citation. Those are the only two you have. Anything else? Uh, that's that's all I have. Okay, let's talk citations for a second. Please, I know there's the citation X when I've seen it, you know, citation X. I don't know where that's ten and they say that can fly slightly faster.

Tell us the different citations and which one you won't. Okay, we've really gone on a tangent here. Huh. Yeah, Well the X is really a Roman emeral ten. That's called a citation ten. And keeping this very simple, the citations kind of go up in number A one or two or three or four or five, and the ten is the biggest one and the fastest one. It is a little bit faster than commercial airlines and it's great. Um, the one I have is more on the one level.

And what I like about these is their single pilot certified, so you don't have to have two guys in the cockpit. So because I'm rated for it, I can I can take the jet up whatever and wherever I want to go, and I really love that feeling. What's the logic between

the one pilot and the two pilot. Well, I mean, I think back in the day there were pretty complicated systems to manage, and it kind of took two guys to to do it, and they've sort of managed to simplify it over the years where it really is something that one guy, one competent pilot can handle. So why if you fly on a ten do they have to at some point? You know, it's an f a thing. I think once when a plane's big enough, they just don't like the idea of something that big being flown

by one guy. So I'm sure there's a number of reasons. Okay, So you have a Citation one. Now, when was that plane built? Yeah? The one what I have is called a c J one and it was built in two thousand four, two thousand four. And who did you buy it from? Uh? It was Yeah, it was sold back to Citation Cessna Excitation, and so they kind of have their own inventory and I bought it from from there. You know, it's like they're used car lot. Okay, So

where is it today? I keep it here in l A. And we're in l A. And I'm not gonna go check out your plane, but I mean there's is it in Orange Counties? It in Beans where I'm based at the Long Beach Airport. Okay? How often do you take it out? About once a week? Once a week, And if you go out once a week. Where might you go? Uh? I like like have a stoo a lot or you know, you'll find somewhere to go. Believe me, I like going down to Baja Cabo. It is great. You know, Vegas

is very close. That kind of thing. You will land there and hang out and then fly back, or you just fly and lookout what's going around? Sure land, have some fun? Okay? So how many people can fly on the your plane? It'll hold seven? Okay, So as you fly once a week, how often are you out there alone? How often you out there with other people? About half half the time I had my family with me and half the time I'm by myself. Okay. How much does it cost an hour to fly the play? Uh? Well,

really getting into the into this huh thousand bucks? An Well, if you do everything yourself, you can actually you can mitigate the cost quite a bit. So, like I deal with scheduling, the maintenance, and you know, all the stuff that you would normally hire a full time pilot to do, I I generally take care of and that helps the

cost a lot. And then what kind of maintenance is required, I mean there's all the tune up stuff, you know, like you know, in a car, you go in every whatever, three thousand miles or six thousand miles in In the jet, everything's on a different schedule because the battery needs to be checked every year, and something else needs to be checked every nine months, so it's almost like every three

there's something that needs to get looked at. I mean obviously, you know, you can't pull over in the sky if you've got a problem with the plane. So the maintenance is very meticulous. Uh, and so that's why there's so much more attention on maintenance. And the maintenance has done it, you're where the uh, the plane is held in Long Beach. I mean there are mechanics around. I generally go to Lake Havasy for maintenance. You go to where for meat?

And she said lake Havasu. Okay, So you have the plane and you know what needs to be done, and you fly to Lake Havasou how long is it going to take him to do the maintenance? Depends? Right, Sometimes they need it for a few days, or sometimes it's in in and out in an afternoon. And you go to those people because they're cheap. You trust them. I have a relationship with him. Yeah, Um, yeah, I actually I lived in Lake Havasoo for a few years. Ah, so is that like that's like a resort area. I've

never even been there. It is, uh, well, I love it. We'll just say that to start with. But you know, very different California, right, it's very much. You know, people carry guns. You know that it's not even a concealing carry. It's just you just strap it on. And you know, they're not wearing masks and like have a c let's put it that way. But you know, I like the spirit out there too. I think that's that's cool that they're you know, very freedom oriented and I like that.

And of course I I like that in California people are are are careful. And are you a big water sports guy? Yeah. My my parents always took us, our whole family to uh to like have us who for summer vacation, So we grew up water skiing and stuff. Okay, so not being a pilot and being anxious generally speaking, if you you to the schedule of repair, you're not gonna have a problem or could you have a problem up there anyway? I mean it's mechanical. Mechanical things break

for sure. I mean on the one hand, that's why, in general, there's two of everything on a jet. Have you ever noticed there's two engines and to yokes, to steering wheels, you know, two radios, to two of almost everything, so that you're you're hopefully you'll be okay if something breaks. But I mean it is a mental outlook that you have to have. It like, look, I might have an emergency and I need to be able to be prepared to to deal with that, to know that might happen.

And that's why training is also very important. I I go to a place in Texas twice a year and train for a few days at a time, and we go over emergencies extensively. Okay, so what's the worst emergency you've had? Actual emergency? Well, fortunately in the yeah, in the real world. You know, these planes are really reliable, so uh you know. Um, Actually, I had a light come on once that said you might have a clog in your fuel system and it means you should land

right away. I was over Palm Spring, so I landed and it turned out it was just a faulty light, so I didn't have a problem, but it looked like I might have a major problem if I didn't land quickly. And how about just experience fly? You ever have a bad experience? Uh well, I almost flew over the bush

ranch once. I was flying in Texas, and you know, and generally you're on with air traffic controllers, but I just felt like being not talking to anybody, which which you can is perfectly legal and you can do as long as you stay with in certain parameters. You can't go too high blah blah. But one of one of the main things you have to do flying they call this VFR, is that you have to make sure you don't go into any airspace, uh you know around here'd

be l A X for example or something. So I was cruising along and I actually did talk to a controller for a minute and said blah blah blah, and he said, okay, yeah, I go ahead and go to wherever you're going. He goes, and don't forget about the bush ranch there, and I'm like what, I'm looking around and all of a sudden, this is before we had those great screens of GPS. I'm like, only, funk, where's

the where's the A tranch? And so I wasn't sure what to do, so I just took a hard left and went like fifty miles the other way to make sure I didn't accidentally go over that. You wouldn't You wouldn't want to do that and get in big trouble. Okay, Jim told me that you flew them to tell your ride. I didn't get this deep, but I have to ask you. Did you take them in to the tell your ride airport right and tell your ryde? I didn't, um because

that's like one of the scariest airports. Yeah, you know, I mean, I think it would be fun to fly into, but you know, if I'm flying somebody in their family, I don't need that level of excitement, So you know, I might I might bring another pilot, you know. I uh, if we ever take the plane on tour, I always bring a pilot. So that's one thing that you can do to help the situation. But what we do is we land at Montrose. It's just it's about it. It's it's like at the bottom of the mountain. It's down

the hill. I've been there. But okay, I assume you took another pilot. What would that add to your situation? What kind of situation? Now you say, if I was going to go into a hairy airport, I might bring

another pilot. What would be the thinking there? Oh, well, like if we're for example, if we're on tour, I'll bring on the pilot just because I don't mean I don't want to be responsible for everything in the plane and then going to do the show and then coming back to the airport and making sure that the gas gun on the plane and the credit card, you know, bill was paid and all that stuff. So it's really just offloading the responsibilities of of of being you know,

being charge of the airplane. So when you go on tour, you do take your plane. Um in North America generally, not always, it depends on a couple of factors. But okay, well some uh, you know, big acts, they have a base and they'll fly out for every gig, Like they'll base in Chicago and they'll go to different gigs. How do you do it? Sure? Hubbing? I love hubbing. It's great, you know, the small pleasures you get used to. You know,

I don't mind being on a bus. But you know, we've been on of us for twenty five years, like you know, it does get old after a while, and the idea of you go into the place you check in, you don't bother unpacked because you're gonna be leaving the next day. Right, So the idea of being in one place, one hotel, for five or six nights is really appealing, right, But of course it it makes the costs go way

up because you're flying twice as far going back. So you have to take that any consideration whether it's worth it. So I'd say, you know, we we hubbed generally, like in New York, maybe because the East Coast stuff is all pretty convenient to get to, and other than that, we tend to hop from place to place. Okay, but that plane can't fly all your gear. No, no, just the band, just the band. Let's switch gears. You have this hot sauce, and I take all these vanity projects

with a grain of salt. Also talking about food, but yours is the best vanity hot sauce I've ever and I you know, I use it on a regular basis. For a long time, I was looked on the green thinking there was a little too much bite in the hotter one. But I go back and forth now, So tell us about the development of the hot sauce. Well, I gotta say, like I feel like, I must be the luckiest guy in the music business because I've gotten a positive review from you on a song and a

hot sauce. I mean that happens. Uh, you know, growing up in southern California, just you know, Mexican food was always part of the deal. And I love Mexican food and I love the culture here, and hot sauce was part of it. And it was almost just like on a whim one day, looking at the bottle while I'm pouring it on a taco, like it would be funny to make a hot sauce. Like it was just like that much of a random thought, and I just thought, you know, I think I'm gonna do this because it

would be real, it would be funny. That was kind of the the the only reason the impetus. And but I didn't know how to I don't know how to cook. So but I mean, well, ship, we don't know how to play guitars. That didn't stop us from starting a band, so I won't. I won't let cooking stop me from making a hot sauce. So, uh, you know, where do

you go? You go to the internet. This is probably fifteen years ago, so there were not really recipes for hot sauce On the internet, there's a lot of sausa recipes, but not so much for hot sauce, so that really took a lot more figuring out. Took me a couple of years to get a recipe together that I liked, and finally got this together and decided to make Christmas presents out of it. I'm gonna send it to my buddies and my accountant that kind of thing, and the

feedback was really really phenomenal. They're like, this is good, like, oh, thank you, Like, no, dude, this is you gotta put this out. This is really good. So they kind of encouraged me to try to release it. Okay, from the commercial perspective, there are three. Which one did you send to your buddies? The first one was the red that's kind of your general all purpose hot sauce, right, and then how did you decide you were going to have three? Uh? Well, I mean I think that the main idea with with

with my hot sauces. I wanted a Mexican style hot sauce, which means generally less of vinegary, and I wanted it to taste it and not just be hot. I think a lot of brands. They're they're caught up in the idea of we want to you know, burn your ass off,

and they don't taste very good. So but I think a red and a green is just kind of natural, uh, two sides of the coin, right, So as I always knew I was gonna do a green, and then as as that went on, you know, you can you can see over the last decade, people's palates are changing and people are into spicy stuff way more than they were, so there was kind of this demand for an extra spicy one. That's why I did the super hot. Is this a business when you say business in in a

in a yeah, in a vague sense. Uh no, I mean we we actually we pay the bills, but barely. Okay, so you can buy it on Amazon. How much availability is there outside that? Yeah, I mean, my my goal on this was to be just kind of a regular supermarket brand, not not trying to be a boutique brand, and you know, I kind of want to get it out there, so you go after the big change. You know, we got into Kroger, which is a really big one. That one was like two thousand stores nationally by itself.

So Amazon is is huge for us. It's been great. Um, but I think we're probably in about four thousand stores, four or five thousand stores in the US. What do you know? What would I know about a storage You can get in, but if it doesn't sell, they pull it. Yes, Yeah, that was the on thing I didn't know about the hot sauce business. The grocery business. Right, it's slotting like a crazy business. It's a lot more fun to create a hot sauce and creative brand than it is to

actually do the work and and sell it. How many people are working on the hot slace business. We've We've got about four people in the office. It's a it's a small company. It's you know, a real labor of love. Um. I like it because it's like I feel like it's I don't know, it's a it's a calling card, it's a it's a it's a fun thing to give to people, and people kind of get a kick out of it, you know when they see you know, it's like pizza. Everybody likes to here's a bottle of hot sauce. Okay,

and marketing what is keeping people buying it? Yeah? I'm not really sure. I mean I knew that I didn't want to do traditional marketing, you know when when I I used to have a record label a long time ago, and I just didn't believe that the magazine adds really did anything, um, at least not at this level. Maybe if you're a giant company, then that constant presence is important, but I wanted to just be word of mouth. So I was trying to sell it to restaurants and and

just get you know, good reviews online. And it's still kind of where it's at. It's pretty much a word of mouth kind of product. Okay, your Dexter because because that's not your given name. No, no, my real name

is Brian I. I uh. Again, going back to all our influences, the punk rock influences, they always had kind of wacky names, and I like that, and I like that, you know, in the rock world, you'd be like, I don't know, it would be some really cool name Ian or something like that, you know, Magnus or something, and I thought it was funny to do something that was the opposite of that, And to me, Dexter just seemed like the complete opposite of a cool name, and you

just came up with it. Yourself. I just like that. Yeah, I mean the Descendants. Their singer's name is Milo, which I think it's It makes it because he's the songs are so rad. I love the Descendants, and having him be named Milo, it made him even cooler. I thought, Okay, now, how about going back to finish your degree. How did you decide to do that and how did you actually squeeze it in? Yeah, the USC was a leave of absence,

so technically I didn't I wasn't gone from USC. But I think it's only supposed to Its supposed to expire after a few years, and you know, we're really busy for a long time. And I think it was like, you know, she's fifteen years almost twenty years later that I started thinking about it, going, gosh, that's always been it's gonna be on my bucket list, but cheez is

gonna be a lot to do. But it didn't seem so imperative, like we have to get a record out this year the way it did, you know, ten years before. So I went back and visited with a couple of my old professors and it was great, and they kind of told me that the door would probably be open still and that they would kind of they would sign off on it and let me come back if I

wanted to finish. They encouraged me to do it, and I decided to do it because I knew that that door would not be open too many more years, right, they would retire or go away or you know, it just be too long. So I decided to to go back, thinking that I could probably finish this in a couple of years. I had done quite a bit of work by the time the band took off. Um, I had taken all the exams and the course work and they call um your candidate, and they call that all but dissertation.

So I had done everything with a dissertation and not the dissertation is a small piece. It's a big chunk of work. But um, I thought, well, I can go back and just kind of maybe knock this out in a year or two. And uh, you know, there I was. It was five years. Actually five years. How much time I'm dedicated to it. Well, that's the thing too. It was a part time endeavor for sure. You know, it was a couple of days a week because all the

time I really could spend on it. Wow, I mean, did you ever think why the hell am I doing that? I definitely did halfway through. Yeah, it was. It was tough because there was you know, technology moves fast. There was definitely I had to come up to speed on what had happened in biotech in the last twenty years. So that took a while. And then when I say all about dissertation, I didn't know what my dissertation was

gonna be. So there was that searching process of finding something that I wanted to do, something that you know, the thing about your dissertation it has to be publishable. Research means meaning it has to be something no one's done before. And finding something like oh, ship, somebody did that. You know that That takes a while. That's a process.

So it was definitely there was there was some yeah, some some soul searching, wondering if I was really doing the right thing by going back to finish this, because the end wasn't in sight for a while. Okay, you published it did have any impact, you know, usually don't, but you just built it up so big. Yeah, Well, in order to find this niche, you gotta really dig deep. You get into the stuff that's so esoteric that you know, not many people are even in that zone. So, um,

my thesis was was published in the USC library. Um. The idea is to go back and tease them out a little bit more and make actual research papers. So it hasn't been published like in uh in that in that sense, but it's been cited, you know, thirty two times something like that. So now you're done with it

or you're keeping your hand in biotech. Well, I'm keeping up with the reading and uh my, my my goal is once we finish all this record promo, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to write a paper or two this summer, okay, and in the next thirty or forty years. Are you a musician, are you someone living a life of leisure, Are you a scientist? Or you have no fucking clue? What is it? Yeah? I mean, look, first and foremost, I love the band. It's it's obviously what I've I've

steered my life tours, you know, consciously and unconsciously. So I don't know if I'd ever give that up for sure, but I just you know, there's so much interesting stuff out there that's and so I like obviously dabbling in different stuff, whether it's aviation or hot sauce, you know, really different kinds of things. So I hope to always be busy doing something. I don't see myself retiring. Like, let's let's you're off cycle, you're not making a record,

you're not on the road. What does a typical Dexter day look like? Yeah, uh, you know, flying, going to the beach. We we live pretty close to the beach here, which is great. Um. I have little ones now, so that, as any parent knows, takes up a good chunk of your day. And it's so much fun. Gosh, just that age of having the little ones. They're just what age

are the five and two? Oh yeah, yeah, and just it's just so great just watching them run around and chase each other and laugh at the silliest things and just sit. Really, it puts life into it, you know, as you know, a whole a different perspective. Well, actually I don't know because I don't have kids, but I hear about it. But how did you decide, at this late date you would take that plunge? Yeah, I I always I wasn't sure. I wasn't decidedly that I wasn't

going to have kids. I just didn't want to have kids. Then so you know, I think years later, I'm a little older, I'm a little more settled, I'm in a new marriage, and it just kind of felt it felt right to do it. And I'm really now. I mean, jeez, I'm really glad I did. Okay, Dexter, this has been great. Thanks for illuminating all these issues. Hopefully people will hear your record, you know, the album et cetera. Just one thing. You know, where does the sense of humor come from

in the records? Because this is rare in the music world. Yeah, you know, I don't know if it's insecurity. I think when when bands try to come across too serious, it kind of turns me off in a way. But I think just yeah, just having something you can kind of have a laugh at him. Music supposed to make you feel good at the end of the day, whether it's it can be therapeutic. Doesn't have to be a happy song. It can be a depressing song. But if it's something

that's cathartic, they'll make you feel good. That's one way, and humor is another way. Okay, And for those people who are not big into offspring play, the latest version of going Away, you're really going to be blown away and hopefully more people hear it. Thanks so much, Dexter, thank you very much. It's great speaking with you today. Thank you. Until next time, This is Bob left Sex